My Success Formula

November 19, 2017

Defeat is a familiar feeling to all of us

I think we experience different degrees of defeat on a weekly basis, sometimes worse than others. It can range from realizing you forgot to pay your water bill on time to having a proposal get rejected. It’s easy to let that defeat wear you down, especially when it feels like it’s piling up on you.

You convince yourself it’s easier to just let life barrel over you. It always seems like one defeat leads to another. However, you’ve got to learn to build up the personal stamina to bounce back in the face of failure and defeat. You can’t give up, ever. It’s that belief in your strength that allows you to recover.

I see products fail all the time

I’m a part of the infomercial, As Seen On TV world that sees endless successes and failures come and go. I see products fail all the time. People come in with the “next big thing” only to fall way short of their expectations. You know what I tell people whose product isn’t a great success? Test it again. Make changes. Pivot.

It’s a popular word in the tech world, a new way to talk about failure. I think it’s a great way to look at things. Take away the word fail. Make it about change. Is the direction your product is going in not working for you or potential customers? Shift gears. What’s missing? That’s what you need to figure out. And that might take more than one round of failure.

When something goes wrong you need to shift your perspective

Instead of seeing it as a failure, see it as a test that didn’t work. You’ve eliminated a problem. Keep troubleshooting and eventually you’ll solve it. I’ve had business ventures that I thought were a sure thing, only to lose money on them. Did I drop out of the entrepreneurial world just because of that? Absolutely not. Those experiences led me down new paths, into the world of infomercials and Shark Tank.

In the old days if I failed I would be devastated. I had trouble dealing with it. Over time I learned to keep pushing forward, and in the end that’s how I achieved success. When something went wrong, I shifted direction. If you feel like you’re starting to drown, swim! Understanding that you just need to keep pushing forward and face your failures and you’ll have a more successful outcome at the end of the day!